Guts
by amaviscript
Summary: A three-part character arc with each chapter corresponding to each movie in the new trilogy. Rey is roped into a cause she didn't even know she believed in, and it leaves a mark. TW. This fic is a character-centric retelling of the movies.
1. rust

**A/N:**

This fic comes with a trigger warning. It is not a Reylo fic. If you're looking for shipping, you won't find it here. Also, I don't know anything about Star Wars.

* * *

So much happens.

It's mere days and she's _running through the desert with a stranger and a BB unit so fast and TIE fighters shrieking through the air and shooting at them Force above she's being shot at and Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon this is_ the _Millennium Falcon and oh no it's falling apart but you're_ the _Han Solo and Finn getting EATEN for Force's sake and running running running through the bowels of a ship too big and so much green and there's so many people in Maz's cantina and Finn leaving why is he leaving and the lightsaber the lightsaber that calls her with a pull like a magnet she can't pull away but she jerks herself back and tears on her face and too much too much running running running and shooting at a figure in black terrifying she can't move she's frozen and the crackling heat of the lightsaber scalds her neck she's gonna die and then -_

He reaches into her mind and she _can't stop him -_

And then she _can_.

But it's more running and blowing things up and watching Han Solo be murdered in cold blood by his only son and fighting that

 _Monster_

In the forest, snow seeping through her thin shoes and turning her toes pale and red, fighting with a lightsaber she doesn't want to touch, doesn't know how to use, fighting a figure cloaked in black, in hatred and rage and _the dark side_.

A monster.

She doesn't know if there's a man left within the monster that is Kylo Ren, and she doesn't have time to think about it. Finn's hurt, Finn's dying, and she throws herself into that so she can't feel him reaching into her mind and she can't stop him.

 _You know I can take whatever I want._

 _No no no no no no._

And then they're at the base and Finn's whisked off somewhere and they take him away from her and she's so scared and something deep inside her lurches because without Finn how does she stop him reaching into her mind and she can't stop him _can't stop him can't stop..._

She finds a refresher and something rough and scrapes at her skin, digging into her hips and wrists and ankles, crying because there's no water, nothing to wash her clean of his presence in her mind.

So much happens, so much out of nowhere, crashing into her quiet little life on Jakku like a Star Destroyer into a moon and she doesn't have a single moment to process any of it until she's standing alone in a refresher on a hidden Rebel base that stands for a cause she was roped into not two days ago.

She finally emerges with red eyes, body curled tight, and there're fresh clothes set out for her and they're simple and grey and practical and not dissimilar to the only clothes she came here with. Clothes that are conspicuously missing.

No one knows.

It hits her and she breaks all over again. No one knows, no one was there, no one's been told to lay out fresh clothes for her because her other clothes reek of terrified sweat and oil and metal and should be burned.

 _You know I can take whatever I want._

 _NO._

She doesn't tear the room apart. She doesn't knock fixtures down and rip the bedding apart with her bare hands. She certainly pictures doing so. She definitely wants to. But she sits on the edge of the bunk, moving slowly as if her legs have been trapped in sticky goo _not metal cuffs not his mind not his Force hold that is_ not _what it feels like_ but she can't shake his presence, that dark impression like rot and rust tucked away in the guts of the ships she used to scavenge.

 _The dark side._

He's left his mark on her, a dark rotting rusting mark in the guts of her soul and she can't stop the thought soon enough and she wonders if it will ever leave.

And she cries silently next to fresh clothes that no one had a reason for giving her.

* * *

The Millennium Falcon is huge, and the veins of the ship groan and creak as they soar through hyperspace, and she watches the star tracks fly by above her head.

It's too quiet in the ship. She sleeps here, in the cockpit, when she sleeps. If she sleeps. Chewie knows well enough to leave her unbothered, but she can't help but seek out his company when she feels like moving out of the pilot's chair. That sticky staticky glue has adhered, almost permanently, it seems, to her legs, and she finds herself more and more unwilling to move from her spot until they reach Ahch-To.

 _You know I can take whatever I want._

She looks for distractions, outlets. She tries more than once to search for the Force, to try meditating the way she's read about in old texts passed around at the market in Jakku, heard in whispers passed down about the Jedi.

It doesn't work. She growls in frustration when she can't seem to summon the peace, the same way she did when he was reaching into her mind and she can't stop him but then she did and she pushed back and then when she pushed back again but with a lightsaber in a frozen forest. She can't get it to well back into her heart and mind and so she resorts to sitting curled in the pilot's chair watching the stars soar by in streaks of light.

Eventually, the creaks and groans of the Falcon and the silence of space and the sounds of Chewie tinkering with the mechanics somewhere close by lull her into a doze that is neither deep nor dreamless, and the Falcon dims the lights and drops the temperature slightly and rocks Rey to sleep beneath the stars.

* * *

 **A/N:**

This will be a three-part fic corresponding to each sequel. This chapter corresponds to TFW; the next follows the events of TLJ.

So basically the reason I wrote this was that in the middle of reading a bunch of #reylo stuff on tumblr and twitter (and don't get me wrong, I contributed), I kind of started to realize that Kylo Ren is in reality a gross evil monster and in all honesty, that line (you know I can take whatever I want) has always given me the creeps and I always wondered why on earth JJ Abrams thought it would be a good idea to put a line like that in any kind of movie. So this fic is my response to that.


	2. fire

**A/N:**

Whoo. This part got a bit long. I had a lot more to work with than the first chapter, since Episode VIII deals a lot more with Rey and Kylo Ren's interactions, and I was also watching the movie as I wrote so that I got all the dialogue right. Again, trigger warning. I leaned pretty heavily into the effects Kylo's actions would have had on Rey, but this chapter played a bit more into my headcanon that Rey's willingness to work with Kylo Ren has a lot less to do with 'saving him' than it does with trying to save everyone else. Tl;dr, Rey is smart and selfless and Luke's not being any help so she'll destroy the First Order herself. Longer AN at the bottom, but here you go.

* * *

She's landed.

Somehow it seems she's still hovering there over the precipice, the molten core of a planet igniting beneath her and scalding the back of her neck even in the frozen night, light flashing in her eyes as he bears down on her.

Don't think about that.

Luke, the myth, the hero, the Jedi, isn't interested in helping her. It hurts, it stings, it drives a knife between her ribs and twists in the spot that always throbs when she is reminded that she has no one, that her parents abandoned her on a dustball in the middle of nowhere, when she is reminded of nights like these when she is reduced to begging for someone's help, begging for help that no one cares enough to give.

 _"You think what? I'm gonna walk out with a laser sword and face down the whole First Order?"_

His words, twisted and dripping in malice and bitterness and disdain, scolding her as if she were a child without dignity, burn.

She thought he might be different.

 _Go away,_ he tells her, and her eyes burn with tears and shame and righteous indignation.

They're never coming back. Hadn't Maz reminded her, as tears streamed down her face in the basement of a cantina, hands gripping the cold hilt of a lightsaber she's never touched but calls to her like the stars do. _They're never coming back, but there's someone who still could._

 _Luke_ , she had whispered reverentially, the name seemingly forbidden and secret when spoken aloud. The last of the Jedi. He could teach her, he could show her the ways of the Force. He could come back and save them all.

When Princess - no, General, for there are no royal qualms lingering in the formidable woman who commands the Resistance - Leia had held her, had looked into her eyes and said softly, gently, motherly, "May the Force be with you," her hope had ignited like the planet that is floating as rubble through the stars somewhere, for a brief moment smothering the sickness, the rot that the monster had left on her. She had _believed_.

The man in the tattered robes sitting in his stone hut on the mountain above her is not that man. Not that Luke. Not Luke Skywalker, Jedi, pilot, hero, leader of the Rebellion.

And now the hope is doused, drowned in the rain and the rot.

* * *

(She is drowning in loss and pain and regret and shame and she almost doesn't hear the whispers that draw her away from following the man who is no longer Luke Skywalker and across the island towards a place shrouded in fog and coolness and mystery and familiarity. This is how the lightsaber called her, she remembers. This is the Pull. All at once, her thoughts cease and her heart steadies beneath her ribs and her body no longer feels like it is going to fall apart at the seams. And then she finds the little valley, tucked in the nook of the island, away from the chaos of the sea and the squawking of the strange life-forms that sit on the cliffsides, and the fog parts before her, and the weathered tree calls her, and its roots reach out, beckoning her towards it. It is life-changing, this feeling that floods her senses and quiets the tumult in her heart and mind and overwhelms everything else. For the first time in days, she feels protected, safe, and quietly she says, "I know this place," and he asks "Who are you?" and she thinks she senses a fragment of the real Luke Skywalker laced beneath his words. When he accuses her, stating as fact, "You've seen this place," she whispers, eyes wide, "Only in dreams," and again he asks, "Who are you?" and she thinks _I'm nobody,_ thinking the words she has heard all her life, but for once she wonders if that is actually true, and for once those are not the words that come out of her mouth.)

* * *

He agrees to teach her, but somehow it is not as heartwarming as she had hoped.

* * *

She is lying on a hard stone bed, but she is sleeping, and when she wakes it is not from fear or nightmares or the rot-rust-pain that has woken her the last few days. There's something about the island, she concludes, bringing her sleep that actually gives her rest.

And then he's there, and the world is still, and her breath comes in short gasps, and she reaches blindly for the blaster that Han Solo had given her and she fires.

She thinks she hears a muffled grunt of pain, and the panic that is welling up in her throat and her chest and fingertips is spilling over but the sound of stones clattering to the floor brings her back and the image fades, dissolves. It's as if she had been seeing something out of her peripheral vision, but now that she is aware and looking at it directly, it is no longer there.

In her veins, she can feel him there, in the corner of her eye, and she runs outside and forces herself to not focus and he's there and he says _You will bring Luke Skywalker to me_ and she can feel the his reach, his touch, as he tries to force his way into her mind once again, and the feeling makes her want to vomit as everything comes rushing back and her eyes burn but she clenches her teeth and refuses him access.

He pulls away and she tries not to crumple to the ground in relief.

 _Monster_ , she screams, hisses, rails against the figure that has appeared out of nowhere, but the word does not come, falling flat against the ache that has begun to fill her mouth from the clench of her jaw. The sickness, the bile comes into her throat and she wants to wrap her hands around his throat and squeeze until he feels the pain of what he did to her.

 _You'll pay for what you did_ , she chokes out, fighting back the sob, swallowing down the fear and the weakness, willing the rattling of her heart to cease. It feels like it's going to rupture, split her chest in two, the white-hot terror threatening to cave it in.

And yet he remains still, unblinking, nonplussed. He doesn't care. He merely muses on the curiousity of their situation, wondering aloud as he tilts his head to the side and stares down at her from a distance as a wolf stares cautiously at a deer, evaluating its vulnerable parts, dissecting its prey in its mind as it figures out where to attack.

"I can see you," he says, and it is almost worse than the litany of _you know I can take whatever I want_ that has been pulsing under her veins over the last two days, the litany that is no longer suppressed by the hope of _Luke Skywalker, Luke will teach her, Luke will save her._

 _I can see you_ , he says.

She wants to vomit and she wants to run and hide and curl into a ball and take to the stars, away to somewhere he will never ever find her.

But he did find her, didn't he?

The knowledge that nowhere is safe is a blade to her guts, a blow to her stomach that knocks the wind out of her and nearly makes her cry out in his looming presence so saturated with _the dark side_.

She will not give him the satisfaction.

He continues his curious evaluation ( _"this is something else,"_ he says, almost thoughtfully, but she does not care what's happening, why she's seeing him, she wants him to go away, and his casual airs fills her with rage), and she stands her ground, though every instinct is screaming at her to run.

Luke appears, and Kylo Ren sees him, and fear and terror and panic flood her and she frantically tries to block this monster from seeing but she doesn't have the slightest clue where to begin, and the name drops from the lips she had cleaved in two in a forest forever ago, and it is spoken with the same reverence she has heard galaxies across.

And then it is over.

* * *

(Later, when Luke asks her what she knows of the Force, she says it lets the Jedi control people, and she is somewhat...irritated that Luke doesn't ask her why she thinks that. And then when she sees the darkness, hears it calling her, Luke backs away with fear in his eyes, and says "You didn't even try," and she doesn't understand.)

* * *

The waves pound the rocks and the rain clatters against the stone and she feels at peace until the Dread fills her. It's not like the call of the island, she realizes. This is...sick, and pulls at her guts, and makes her heart leap into her throat. Somehow they are similar, but there is no calm when she feels this pull.

 _Murderous snake,_ she bites out, and this time the words do come, and she relishes in them, she has so many other things she wants to call him, and she hates the way he says _you and I_ , and she wraps herself in her victory as if in a robe when she tells him _you're too late, you lost, I found Skywalker._

 _I know everything I need to know about you_ , she says, using the bile and the sting of the wound to add venom to her words, and she is sure of herself when she says them. She doesn't care to know why he destroyed the temple. She doesn't care to know who's responsible.

He is trying to win her to his side, after what he did to her, and she will destroy him for ever thinking he could even get close.

His tone is so smug, so satisfactory, and she hates that the fiery tears come unbidden to her eyes, hates that the fear makes her lips tremble, hates that all she can do is stand here and be berated.

 _You are a monster_ , she says, releasing the breath she's been holding in that word, because Force knows there are no other words that can be used to describe him.

 _Yes, I am_ , he tells her, and the satisfaction in his voice at her admission makes her recoil.

* * *

(She gets better with the lightsaber. With every hum of the blade, she imagines carving a new scar in that horrid face. _You are a monster,_ she thinks, and she swings it across his other eye. _You'll pay_ , she imagines saying, and swings low across where his kneecaps would be. _Murderer_ , she hisses, and thrusts into an invisible, blackened heart.)

( _You saw there was good in him,_ she reminds Luke, and she is not speaking of the monster that ripped her control from her. There is no good in Kylo Ren, she thinks, but, as she firmly tells Luke she will not fail him, an idea begins to form in her mind.)

* * *

"I'd rather not do this now," she says, knowing now when the Dread fills her and makes the world stop and she keeps her eyes downcast, her body held still on a breath, and she does not let her fear take control.

She's done letting _something else_ take control.

As if to challenge her hold on her fear, he appears to her halfway undressed. The sight creates an entirely new level of gut-wrenching fear inside her and almost immediately her heart begins to pound erratically. She inhales and wills what she knows now is the Force surrounding the island to calm it, and very slowly her breathing evens out. The threat of his unclothed torso still unnerves her, and he ignores her request, audaciously, and she wonders if he can feel the effect on her.

She will get answers.

"Why did you hate your father? Give me an honest answer!"

His silence tests her control, and she feels the fury come back, the rage, slipping under the Force's calming presence and wrapping an icy-hot hand around her heart.

"You had a father who loved you, he gave a damn about you! Why?!"

She's giving too much, too quickly, losing her edge in the conversation. Somewhere in the back of her mind, beneath the roiling surface of her pain and the the knife in her bleeding, abandoned heart and the hot tears streaming down her face and the memory of a crackling red blade in Han Solo's heart, she hopes her pain hums along their connection and wraps around the hole in his chest.

He taunts her. He lies.

 _Liar_ , she says, the word rolling out of her mouth, but then he says the words _who you were meant to be_ , and before he fades away, she thinks she senses something she can use.

* * *

(The blackness isn't as terrifying as Luke had made it out to be. It's not horrifying, like his presence, but also not safe, protective, like the tree, though somehow she knows here she cannot be harmed. It fills her with interest. _I should have felt trapped or panicked_ , she says later. _Let me see them_ , she whispers, and it echoes. _Please please please please please please._

But it is only a mirror, and she is brought back to the sound of waves lapping at the shore.)

* * *

 _You're not alone_ , he says.

She is alone, she thinks. She is, but he doesn't need to know that. Let him think what he will. She will let this fire warm her, let the blanket dry her from the cold ocean water, and she will let him invade her space and appear before her. What choice does she have?

She doesn't call for Luke. She wonders why, at the beginning, why she hadn't told him, though she wouldn't be surprised if he suspected. He had treated her as if she was doomed to fail, just like his apprentice, doomed to fall to the Dark Side, but she understands now. If Luke thinks she is Kylo Ren's equal, then she can use that to her advantage. Luke is useless to her, at this point. He is too afraid, and she will do what needs to be done.

 _For Finn_ , she thinks. _For Finn, for Leia, for the Resistance._ She will do this.

So she meets his eyes across the crackling fire, crackling like his broken, unstable lightsaber, and says, "Neither are you."

"It isn't too late," she says, and with every ounce of willpower she can summon, she raises her cracked, dry hand to his, and watches with bile in her throat as he slowly removes her glove and touches the surface of her fingertips.

She gasps when they make contact - _he's tangible, he's there, he is nothing but skin and bone and blood_ \- and swallows down the urge to jerk it back.

* * *

(Luke does reject her after that. She is angry. _Did you do it?_ she demands. _Did you create the monster that has stolen everything from me?_

And then she bests him, drawing the lightsaber, the blue casting her fury in dangerous light, and wrenches the truth from his shamed lips.

 _Don't do this,_ he begs her, and the face of an old man, small and wrinkled, turns away from her, and she leaves him there to rot.)

* * *

She wraps herself up, a neat little package, and refuses to acknowledge the feeling of metal cuffs once again on her wrists.

 _You know I can take whatever I want._

 _I can see you._

She can feel the conflict, as sure as her own.

In her mind, against the mantra of _you know I can take whatever I want, I can see you, you're not alone,_ she repeats back to herself the reasons for her actions. _I am giving myself up for the Resistance. I will turn him, and then I will destory him,_ she repeats. _For Finn,_ she thinks. _For Finn, for Leia, for Han Solo, for the Resistance. For life, for the Force._ She will make the hole wider, deeper, until it is large enough to bring Kylo Ren and the First Order to its knees.

"You don't have to do this," she tells him, sowing the doubt and reaching out with the Force, reaching into his heart. "I feel the conflict within you; it's tearing you apart." She forces gentleness, empathy into her voice, and with each word, the tension behind her grows palpable.

" _Ben_ ," she says, using his name, knowing the name given to him and not the one he has given himself twists that knife a little deeper. She turns to him, almost startled to find his eyes watching her intensely. It makes that feeling, that horrible rot settle deep in her gut, knowing how close she is to him, but she will not back down now. "You will not bow before Snoke," she says confidently, stepping closer. His smell nearly makes her gag. "You will turn." And then she plays right into his calloused, raw hands.

"I'll help you," she says in a soft whisper. _You and I_ , she says beneath that. _Together_.

She does not break eye contact. She does not move away. Not until he says _your parents_ , and then she has to take a step back, reevaluate.

The creature that is now before her eyes does not frighten her nearly as much as the thought of her plan failing does.

* * *

She screams. She feels like it has been so long since that particular sound was wrenched from her body. The creature who has told her she is his apprentice's equal, that she is the Light and he the Dark, and that she has risen to meet him, now pulls her mind from her body, and she cannot stop him, and she screams.

Even as she screams, she fights against the invasion. But he has already breached her mind, hasn't he? It's not difficult for him, Snoke, this horrid creature with a face that makes her recoil.

The knowledge that yet other being has been playing with her mind makes her want to fall to her knees and sob.

Has she not lost enough? Has she not been tortured and her free will violated and her control wrested away from her enough times?

He drops her to the cold floor from a height that resonates through her body when she hits it.

She struggles to her feet despite the pain dragging her down, despite Snoke's hold on her. He toys with her, throwing her hither and thither, and when she finally comes to rest at Kylo Ren's feet, she looks into his eyes, and the room goes still once more.

She can _hear_ him.

It is a strange in-between feeling, somewhere halfway between the Dread she knows is the mark of the dark side that flows through Ben and the calm that flows through her when she summons the Force. She doesn't hear Snoke's taunts, his confident boasts. She locks eyes with Ben Solo and feels his decision.

He's not going to kill her.

The hole is wide enough. The doubt is sown. Right now, Ben Solo is more vulnerable to her attack than ever.

And when he runs Snoke through with Luke's lightsaber, and his hold on her falls away, she wants nothing more than to do the same to Kylo Ren.

But there are problems that demand both their attention first.

* * *

As the room falls around them, bodies littering the floor, she demands he call off the attack, but he is staring at the empty throne, and she reaches for his mind and feels her influence rapidly fade under the pull of his ambition, and she feels her plan, her moment, slipping away.

If she goes for it now, she'll never succeed.

So she begs. She stalls, wondering if she can crack the foundation further, weaken him enough to the point where he won't be able to sense her next move, to the point where when she tries to kill him, he won't be able to kill her. _Please don't do this, Ben. Please don't go this way._ She has to force feeling into the words, and to an extent, she means it. _Please don't kill the only people I care about._ He screams at her, and oddly, she finds his lack of control no longer disturbing, no longer terrifying, but...pathetic.

He begs her, taunts her with her parents. _You're nothing. But not to me._ It's a pathetic plea, hastily made, and the tears that fall from her eyes only further his reckless words. She plays into his hand, lets the tears fall. The wet rage leaves unassuming tracks down her cheeks, and she is centered beneath them.

His hand reaches out and she stares at it, disgusted, tears drying, even as a whispered, desperate please falls from his scarred lips.

The lightsaber flies to the hand he wanted to be his.

Equals, Snoke had said. The light and dark. How fitting the lightsaber splits in two.

* * *

(She tucks the pieces in a drawer. Perhaps she'll find someone who can fix it, now that Luke is gone. It's interesting, isn't it, how she'd actually felt the moment he had let go? A tipping of the scales, as it were.

The fear is gone from her expression when she closes the door in his face.)

* * *

 **A/N:**

In my personal opinion, the idea of having Rey "save" Kylo Ren is gross and this chapter explored that. Instead, the idea of Rey turning it around and manipulating him back to the Light just to save the lives of everyone she loves give her character an edge of intelligence and strength despite her fear. She knows she's outmatched against him both mentally and physically, and that she can't defeat him that way, so she plays to her own strengths, knowing he has zero impulse control and zero balance, and sways that to her advantage, using the idea of the Force bond and his fascination with her to manipulate him long enough so the people she loves won't die at his hand. It's gross and excruciating and traumatic but she does it anyways because she's smart and strong and calculating and Luke Skywalker isn't being any help so she'll do it herself. Her reaction to first seeing him? Pure instinct. She hisses and screams at him, and he appears nonplussed. (Anyone else creeped out by that?) Then later, she realizes he may be a resource to manipulate in the fight for the light. The hand-touching scene? She wants to know if he's tangible, if he poses a threat. "You're not alone"? She's placating him, giving him common ground when there is none, building the foundation she will tear down. Her plea to him in the elevator? "I know there's good in you"? She's stalling. She knows how conflicted he is. She's making him weak, vulnerable to attack, so that when she tries to kill him, he won't be able to kill her. The second the imminent threat of Snoke and the guards is eliminated? She goes for the lightsaber. As the throne room is falling around them? "Please don't do this" isn't "please don't leave me," it's "please don't murder all these people I care about." Tl;dr, Rey is clever and powerful and resilient.

There will be a final part to this, but I want this story to remain within canon, so until Episode XI comes out, this one'll be on hiatus.


End file.
